When this king left his noble life for a more blessed future life, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, mindful of his temperance and mildness, and afraid of losing his nobility of lineage, sent ambassadors to his brother, the duke of Edessa, to take control of the kingdom. He lived in splendor in his realm; whenever he went out he had a gold shield carried before him, which bore the image of an eagle, in the Greek manner. Like the pagans, he went about in a toga, let his beard grow, accepted bows from his worshippers, and ate on rugs laid on the ground. If he entered one of his towns or cities, two knights blew two trumpets before his chariot. Baldwin then yielded to the ambassadors and set off for Jerusalem. But when the neighboring pagans heard what he proposed to do, and saw him depart, they embarked in their ships, with a favoring wind, although in vain, since the duke was hurrying along the sandy banks of the sea, accompanied by a small group of men, while they rowed furiously, their prows plowing the waves, striving to intercept him, hurrying to bring their ship to the shore. But the duke, with all of his mortal strength gone,[261] in his great anguish called upon the Most High, promising that he would always obey Him and that he would rule the kingdom in accordance with Christian faith. And lo, the ships which had been moving as though they had wings now stood still as though stuck in mud, and the more each man struggled to sweep the sea with his oars, the more the hope was ridiculed by the steady backward movement of their boats. Thus the efforts of the unjust were confounded, and the duke remained deservedly free, seeing in this auspicious event a sign that heaven favored his assuming the purple. I have omitted mentioning the fact that Daimbert, the bishop of Pisa, had already set out for Jerusalem, together with group of his people, accompanied by the bishop of Apulia, by Bohemund, and by this very Duke. After he accepted the kingdom, it is said that his first expeditions were undertaken against the Arabs. When he reached the slopes of Mount Sinai, he found a barbaric group of people, who resembled the Ethiopeans. He spared their lives because of their untamed behavior and ugliness. There, in the church which is called Saint Aaron, where God had given his oracles to our fathers, he prayed, and the army drank from the fountain of refutation, where, because Moses had drawn a distinction with his lips, and did not sanctify the Lord in the presence of the sons of Israel,[262] the Lord kept him from the promised land. Here the opinion of my priest has faltered, for it is is known that not Sinai, but the mountain Or, which forms the border of the ancient city of Petra in Arabia, was the place where Aaron lost his life, and water emerged from the depths of the rock which he struck.